


Bluebird

by Thunderrrstruck



Series: Marvellous Daemons [1]
Category: His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman, Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Daemons, Arc Reactor Symbolism, Comfort, Daemons, F/M, Fluff, Hospitalization, Love, Post-Iron Man 1, Tony Stark Has A Heart, because symbolism, conversations with your soul, technically two
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-18
Updated: 2020-04-18
Packaged: 2021-03-01 18:53:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 673
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23721925
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thunderrrstruck/pseuds/Thunderrrstruck
Summary: Tony has time to think back on everything that has happened since he set foot in Afghanistan. He has a heart-to-heart with his daemon while all he can do is lay on a hospital bed and recover.
Relationships: James "Rhodey" Rhodes & Tony Stark, Pepper Potts/Tony Stark, Tony Stark & Original Daemon Character(s)
Series: Marvellous Daemons [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1708606
Comments: 1
Kudos: 20





	Bluebird

**Author's Note:**

> This idea has been in my head a long time. I have dreams of an entire mcu rewrite with daemons, but I'm going to be real (*side-eyes my dc-mcu mash-up idea*) that's probably not going to happen. Maybe in fifteen years?
> 
> Anyways, have a little glimpse into my daemon!verse with amazing Tony and his little birb.

There’s a bluebird by his heart. It lives there, curled up like a last line of defence protecting his sternum and underneath that his heart. She used to want to fly, but now it is content in sitting there, taking after her soulmate’s currently docile demeanour. She sleeps soundly while her soulmate can’t. He stares at the ceiling, blank ceiling tiles for a blank room of this bland hospital. He doesn’t want this. He doesn’t want beeps and sterilisation. He wants Pepper. He wants Rhodey. He wants the only two people in the world who ever gave a damn about him. He can forgive their reluctance to support (let alone join) his crusade because their fear came from a place of love. Not ambition like Obie, not anger like the press, not self-servitude like both.

Love. They showed that they both love him. In return, Tony loves them both more.

He places a hand over the bluebird, securing it to his chest. Small Ferrilia shifts her head and peeps open an eye at him but otherwise does not move from her spot on top of his arc reactor.

_“You don’t regret it?”_ she asks him through their telepathic bond.

“I wouldn’t change anything,” he says. Like he said at the press conference, he was awoken, eyes opened to the horrific truth of his company’s deeds – _part_ of his company’s deeds, at least – to learn that the money he got? Blood money. It gave him a mission. His new mission is to undo the hurt he caused through his blindness. “What’s my legacy if not an arms dealer? I want to change that.”

Birds can’t smile (not to say that Ferrilia is a _bird_ , in manners of the truth, only that she mirrors the appearance of one), but Tony swears that the way she just opened her beak was an expression of joy.

_“That’s a tiresome uphill battle. The press, the government. That requires a lot of resilience.”_

Tony breaks his gaze with his daemon to stare at the ceiling some more. “I know,” he says pensively. It requires a very strong will to stay on course, to not be deterred by the chaotic world around him. If he can _keep_ the world from devolving into a militaristic-based marble of blue for as long as he lives, he just might feel like a success.

“Hold up.” Tony brings his gaze back to the bluebird by his heart. “Are you saying I’m _not_ resilient?”

Based on the look she gives him, he has five seconds to amend his statement before she starts to peck at him. Hard enough to annoy him into submission, he knows how she likes to do it.

“ _We_. You’re saying _we_ are not resilient?”

The bluebird only chirps, and Tony understand that as her form of laughter. All his life, he viewed daemons as a separate part of the soul. _They_ had _to be externalised as a way of representing a discrepancy_ , he thought. Yet in the past three months, since Afghanistan until now, he came to understand that she isn’t a separate form tethered to his life force. She _is_ him. She is his caution, his humanity, and his guiding light. She is as much Iron Man as _he_ is. To ignore her will end him up no better than the people he used to work with. She _is_ him, and she is the only part about himself he actually loved.

“What if I give you some upgrades to your suit compartment?” he asks. “Wouldn’t you love that.”

In response, Ferrilia tightens her little frame, fluffs out her feathers, and settles her head to a position in which she can fall back asleep. A perfect blue ball sleeping over the other blue circle, both powering his heart in very different ways. His lips twitch up. With no back and forth yelling between the two halves of his mind and a peaceful daemon cutely nestled in dreamland,he can wait in peace for Pepper and Rhodey’s arrival.

_Peace_. Isn't that nice?


End file.
